Application of Response Surface Methodology to Synthesize Appropriate Molecularly Imprinted Polymer for Diazinon

Molecular imprinting technology has become an interesting research area to the preparation of specific sorbent material for environmental and occupational sample preparation techniques (1). In the molecular imprinting technology, specific binding sites have been formed in polymeric matrix, which often have an affinity and selectivity similar to antibody-antigen systems (2). In molecular imprinted technology, functional monomers are arranged in a complementary configuration around a template molecule, then, cross-linker and solvent are also added and the mixture is treated to give a porous material containing nono-sized binding sites. After extraction of the template molecule by washing, vacant imprinted sites will be left in polymer, which are available for rebinding of the template or its structural analogue (3). The stability, convention of preparation and low cost of these materials make them particularly attractive (4). These synthetic materials have been used for capillary electrochromatography (5), chromatography columns (6), sensors (7), and catalyze system (8). Depending on the molecular imprinting approach, different experimental variables such as the type and amounts of functional monomers, porogenic solvent, initiator, monomer to cross-linker ratio, temperature, and etc may alter the properties of the final polymeric materials. In this work, chemometric approach based on Central Composite Design (CCD) was used to design the experiments as well as to find the optimum conditions for preparing appropriate diazinon molecularly imprinted polymer.